Gov: Kill ‘death’
Cites Pope, ‘Pop’ against capital punishment
ALBANY – Gov. Cuomo wants to put the final nail in the coffin in the state’s dormant death penalty law.
With Pope Francis on Thursday calling the death penalty “inadmissible in all cases,” Cuomo said he would introduce legislation to strip the death penalty out of New York law completely.
The move would be mostly symbolic since the state’s top court ruled in 2004 that the law as written was unconstitutional. Three years later, the last crime that carried a death sentence was reduced to a maximum life imprisonment term.
Cuomo’s late father, former Gov. Mario Cuomo, vetoed death penalty legislation 12 consecutive years during his three terms in office, saying it “demeans those who strive to preserve human life and dignity.”
“Pop was right then, and he is right now,” Gov. Cuomo said.
The measure was signed into law not long after Republican George Pataki, who beat Mario Cuomo, took office in 1995.
Though people were sentenced to death, no one was actually executed before the state Court of Appeals in 2004 effectively invalidated the law, which technically is still on the books.
There’s been no serious effort since 2004 to revive it so that it meets constitutional muster.
“Today, in solidarity with Pope Francis and in honor of my father, I will be advancing legislation to remove the death penalty — and its ugly stain in our history — from state law once and for all,” Cuomo said.
He added that Pope Francis’ call to end the death penalty across the globe “is ushering in a more righteous world for all of us.”
“The death penalty is morally indefensible and has no place in the 21st century,” Cuomo said.
A spokesman for the state Senate Republicans who control the chamber could not be immediately reached for comment.
Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie said he supports the governor’s effort to make sure the death penalty is dead.
"The death penalty is flawed, discriminatory and outdated," Heastie said.
The Vatican announced Thursday that it was changing its position on the death penalty, which had allowed it in rare cases “if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.”
But now, under Pope Francis, the Catechism of the Catholic Church will teach “that the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide.”
The death penalty has been abolished in most of Europe and South America, but it is still in use in the United States and in several countries in Asia, Africa and the Mideast. In addition, just this week Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey could soon move to reinstate the death penalty, which it had abolished in 2004 as part of its bid to join the European Union.